Illusions
by Jo Girl
Summary: Hermione secretly loves Snape, so she creates illusions of him, since she knows she cannot have him. One day, she is stolen from the castle... what happens now? R/R please, H's POV
1. Let Me Love You

He was an illusion.

            A beautiful illusion I had created that visited me while I lived.

            Forbidden.  The word had made him more tempting.  It was an implicit rule that I dared to break.  Forbidden.  The command had never been broken before.  

            I wanted to shatter it.  My full heart lent power to my limbs and pushed my brain faster and faster.  The more speed it gained, the more it could think about him.

            Him.  The forbidden illusion.  

            No.  He could not be both.  It was him that was forbidden, so I had created what was allowed—an illusion of him.  It was the only thing I had, for I secretly devoted everything else to him.  My thoughts, the beating of my heart, my time, my life.  His.

            Nothing was mine but yet he had not taken it.  It lay delicately in some sort of middle-ground, waiting, like an open book, for him to pick it up.  That was all I wanted him to do.  If he turned me away because I was not good enough, that meant that I wasn't.  If he handed me over to the Dark Wizards because he hated me, that was all I deserved.  But if he loved me…

            If he loved me!  The thought was perfection that I hadn't earned.  I was imperfect and pathetic and weak and he was so strong.  I loved him through his cruelty and his hateful moments, but the thought that he would, even could, love me back…

            It was too much for me.  I had always understood everything, but I didn't understand this.  But I didn't care if I understood it or not.  The vision visited me each day, deep in the dungeons.

            My illusion would split from the real professor and come over to me.  He would confess his love and slip his hand beneath my chin to tilt it upward.  

            "I've loved you more than I ever loved myself," I'd say.  My speech hadn't started out that way, but with each day, more of my feelings were outpoured.  "You are all I've ever wanted…" 

            Some days I would not be done for minutes and minutes, secretly admitting my guilt as I numbly chopped ingredients. It was almost as though I lived twice:  once in reality and once with my illusions.

            Illusions, dreams.  They swirled about me, lacing themselves with reality and giving it a crystalline glow.  I did not sleep at night; I dreamt.  I used to lie awake in bed and fear the sleep that replaced consciousness.  But, now, I surrendered into my enthralling dreams and only regretted that I had awoken.  

            Love didn't live in my heart, only my Love, who brightened every day with his dark presence.

            Snape.  Once the word had been chilly to me, but now I embraced the cold, heating it up and breathing life into it.  It didn't matter if he loved me, only that he let me love him.  I didn't care if he used me or broke me.  To myself, I was not a human but a life dedicated to him and to my ardor.

            This passion was such a strange feeling.  It surged through my fingertips that excitedly wrote his essay because he would read it.  It burnt beneath my eyes when they saw him.  I don't know if anyone else noticed it, but I could feel it, a hot, uncomfortable feeling that managed to make me long for it.  The sting of his hard words became a welcome caress.  He could not have known my feelings for him and I was glad he didn't.

            And yet I wished he did.  

            As a child, I had needed to categorize everyone as 'good' or 'evil.'  I'd put him in the wrong place and seen things I'd invented to strengthen my point.  How wrong I had been, Severus.  My heart, yet untouched by love, had been mistaken.  If only he loved me, it could have never made that mistake.

            I wanted to kiss away the hated mistake that I had washed so many times with my tears.  I didn't even care if he kissed me back.  

            I didn't care, for later that day, the illusion would visit me, tucking my unworthy hair behind my ear and telling me he loved me and kissing me back.

AN:  This may seem like another of my one-chapter stands, but it's actually not.  Snape's Hermione is so… different from Harry's.  Darker, with an inferiority complex.  Well, I suppose we'll see what happens between the two of them.  Warning:  I tend to update on my own time so the next chapter could be out tonight, tomorrow or a month from now.    
Please review!


	2. Shattered

            "Ms. Granger."  The noise broke my illusion and I stared sadly at the floor, searching for the pieces.  I needed them, even with cracks in them and glued back together.  If they were to be crushed beneath someone's careless tread…

            That's what they were:  careless.  Careless and carefree, they had never sat alone and wondered how they could be loved or, if that was too much to ask, be allowed to love.

            "Gillyweed," I responded, hating my eyes as they left the spot in the air where my illusion had disappeared.  I stretched myself over two realities and was sorry to lose one so pleasant, even for the unequaled rapture of his voice and his attention.

            My eye's traveled to his and for one burning moment, he looked into my eyes.  I didn't know what he saw and, later, I stared at their reflection, trying to decode their secrets.  They didn't seem like mine anymore, I had been thinking, when I realized they weren't.  They _would be_ his.  

            His eyes were black and cold.  How had they become that way?  Who had taken their warmth and left his beautiful eyes glassy and pained?  I wanted to love Snape and to hate the person who had done it to him.  I wanted to steal life and animation back for him and I expected nothing in return.

            "Excellent," he sneered.  But he had changed.  The sneers he gave me were different that they had once been.  Did he hate me?  Did he sense my love and hate it?

            He could hate me, but not my love for him.  Not my love, that breathed its own air and lived it's own life.   Please hate me, I thought.  I prayed each night that he didn't hate my love, endless devotions and candles flickering on the walls of basilicas.  I'd never even hoped he didn't hate me.

            In fact, his hate would be welcome.  Hate was passion, as love was.  Passion—I craved it.  Disinterest would be the cruelest temperature.

            An hour later, I was gone with the illusion clutched in my heart and the question still in my memory.  

            The day was long and classes stretched ahead of me.  A quarter hour in the common room, then Charms held no reprieve.  I took the long way back to the tower, as I always had, to look at the pictures.

            The people must have left the settings of their portraits for a cheerier place.  I silently wished the same thing.  I wanted to be someplace, any place, else.  For once, I didn't want to study.

            I wanted to curl up in bed and awake rested and happy.  I wanted to live again.

            And yet, that was unthinkable.  Life without the one I loved would be awful.  I could not erase the existence of my feelings like an unneeded line.

            The future was to be written and each day was shrouded with smoky mist.  I could not see ahead and the past didn't matter.  I was alone, for I could see no one.

            I found myself losing consciousness.  Something pulled my thoughts from my mind to throw me into a deep sleep.  Inviting in its depth, yet frightening in its source,  I surrendered, feeling my knees buckle and my hands vainly reach for assistance.


	3. Stolen Tears

     Silent tears dripped, shining and curved, from my closed eyes.  I hadn't felt the passage of time, but I could feel its weight, heavy on my chest.

     More time had passed, more time that had been robbed from Sevarus and I.  I wanted to break down time, to kill it.  It would bring summer and separation and make my heart forget, someday, these feelings that now composed my present day.

     A dull ache inside my skull told me that I had fallen heavily.  My hands were tightly clenched and, slowly, I loosened their grip on nothing.

     Why had I fallen?  Why had I fainted?  How long had it been?  

     I staggered to my feet, wiping tears from my face as I had done so often before.   I would go to the hospital wing.  Mrs. Pomfrey would know what to do.

     My feet were heavy and clumsy.  Invisible strings moved me as though I were a puppet, putting one foot in front of the other.  It hurt to walk, but I felt as if I couldn't stop.  I counted out sets of four paces.

     One A Two A Three A Four A… One A

     A shattering noise reached my eardrums.  Even the faint echo hurt them, for I knew its nature—

     Human and pain-filled.   It was a reflection of myself, a sketchy caricature, and my heart ached for it.  The pain was dear to me, the pain that I knew in my heart was love, but I could not wish it on anyone else.

     Two A Three A Four A… One

     He was tall and lean, powerful, yet sinewy.  His face could have been handsome if pain didn't contort its straight nose and clear eyes.  His arms reached for me, stealing my voice with one hand and my waning power with the other.

     I was weak, light, sick.  Stealing me was no effort and I knew I was no precious jewel to be hunted down.

     I didn't struggle.  I didn't attempt to stop him or my tears and curled into myself.  The wind pushed against my back as he ran.  Down the hallway, turning, outside.  I closed my eyes against the dizzying scene.

      It was easier not to care with my eyes closed.  I didn't care where he took me.  I didn't care what he did to me.  I didn't care if the world came crashing down around the two of us, crushing my tears with its mass. 

      I didn't care, for my illusion was there, holding me, safe and warm.

AN: Wow, she really is disturbed.  I currently have one review, which makes me sad… please review!  I don't have any disclaimers, but I think it's pretty obvious that I don't own it.


	4. Thieved

            I awoke to find him standing over me—the pain-filled stranger.  His eyes were misty, but stared into my face.  His thin neck flowed into a sculpted chest…

            I pulled the blankets that covered me tighter around my body.  Where had my robes gone?  Had he stolen what I had been saving for my Love?

            I didn't know.  Tiny sobs formed in my chest, but I was afraid to release their pressure.  As they gathered, pain assaulted my ribs—

            Broken, like my very self.

            He had.  He must have.  

            _Would he do it again?_

            My eyes focused on the cement ceiling and I heard him leave, gentle footfalls on the hard floor I was laying on.  I must have been effortless, easy.  Cold dampness floated through the air and rested, dewy, on the ground, the blanket, and the face of a girl lying on the floor.

            Me.  A bookworm, a studious teacher's pet.  Cruel thoughts raced through my mind, hurting, too, my tender body and I called out for my illusions.

            Nothing came.  No cleansing tides washed upon my wave-tossed body.  No gentle kisses erased the ones he must have ripped from me.  No warm embrace shielded me from the cold that surrounded me as two eyes darted across the room and two hands pulled the thin blanket closer and closer.

            He had stolen them.  My illusions were gone.

            Taken.

            Thieved.

AN:  Another pitifully short chapter, but my muse is feeling brief today so we could expect no more.  Please review and I will update as soon as Sergei(my muse) and I feel like it.  I hope everyone understood what happened… ^^U


	5. Do you want to?

AN: Alrighty, at least one person didn't get what happened in the last chapter.  The guy (not Snape) took her to this place and, as she wakes up, she discovered that he has taken advantage of her (AKA, raped her) and wants to hide behind her illusions but she somehow can't seem to reach them anymore.  And to the person who said she knew how it felt, I can only hope you didn't mean exactly that, as it's horrible and wrong and no one deserves something that awful to happen to them.  Ok, Chapter, well… whatever this is.

~*~

            I hurt.  Sounds I didn't actually hear echoed in my ears, the hard sound of silence.  I closed my eyes, but I couldn't see anything.

            I hurt.  Mentally and spiritually, a smoky mask of pain encased me.  It pushed in, crushing me.

            No tears.  No illusions.  No life.

            Everything that had been me for so long was gone.  The smoke had hidden him as he took it, everything.

            Voices outside.  Harder than rock, they assailed me.  Their sources lay ages away, but, nevertheless, they cut the feathery air.

            I didn't turn to see who approached, for I knew there was only one person whose footfalls those could be.  Heavy and urgent… 

            _His._

He would do it again.  His black robe billowed around him, some unseen wind source forming creases at its leisure.  He crouched beside me.

            "Do you want to die?" His voice was clear and welcoming, but suddenly I could feel his arms pulling me from the hallway in Hogwarts.  Suddenly, I almost remembered—

            "What?"  I asked, even though I knew the answer.  I could feel the pleading look in my eyes, though I could not see it.  Pleading not for life…

            "Do you want to die?"  A small crack in his voice—he was nervous.  Pain was in his face again.  

            "Yes."  The word escaped my smiling lips with my permission.  Yes, I wanted to die.  He had taken all I had to live for, the illusions…

            He held up a bottle of clear liquid and I watched his face contort with nervousness.  His gentle hand made its contents swirl with a flick of his wrist.

            "In a moment, my love," he murmured, discarding it just outside my reach and tugging the blanket I gripped with white knuckles.

            The voices became louder and he became more desperate.  He hurt me again, pressed the fog closer to me, but I didn't fight.

            Death lay there, bottled, awaiting me.


	6. Broken Spirit

AN:  Of course I have to write this now, when I have a ton of homework.  For the record, taking classes in the summer is stupid—don't do it.

Also, for several of my stories, people ask me to e-mail them or something like that and, (no offense intended to anyone!) I'm afraid that I just don't do that, as I hate giving away my e-mail address.  It's possible that I'll acquire a free one somewhere along the line, in which case I would, but I really don't want to do that right now.

Also, to everyone who asked, I hope this clears it up—there was just one guy there, who is not Snape.

Lastly, I didn't think there was anything wrong with the person who said she could relate (who was yhf), I was just worried that she could relate too much!  

I LOVE MY REVIEWERS!

~*~

            "Stupefy!"  

            The word came floating back to me later, veiled, misty, more like a remembrance of a fantastical fairy tale than a real memory.  I lost all recollection of what happened next.

~*~

            "Prepare her a sleeping draught."

            McGonagall.  I'd know her voice anywhere.  She looked worried and I was… somewhere else.  The world was confusing and my head pounded.

            "We obviously can't Apparate with her back to Hogwarts, Floo Powder would require a fireplace… we'll have to use Muggle methods."

            "Don't you think we should hear what happened?"

            A soft cry formed in my chest.  Why wasn't I dead?  Why hadn't the man given me the potion?  If he had, I would not hear…

            This man.  Object of my illusions, imagined lover, gentle life, cold reality, flawlessness…

            The female professor leaned over me and my eyes searched the room for the other.  I couldn't move.

            "A Binding Charm, Ms. Granger.  You're best off not moving until Mrs. Pomfrey can fix you up."

            Then he appeared over me, his eyes peering into mine and a bottle in his hand.

            Not transparent, translucent and offering not what the other had.  It held but a temporary sleep.

            His arm gently cradled my head and he tipped it back.  Beneath his arms I was yielding and soft, though my strongest will could not move me.  

            Onyx.  His eyes were two tender black stones, wounded looking.  His arm was looped behind my neck, letting his hand stroke my hair.

            Comforting.  Calming.

            A second hand pressed the cold  lip of the bottle to my mouth and silently bade me drink.  The world grew foggy, slowly fading to black like the sunset, colors leaving one at a time.

            A tune appeared, mournful, low, Hungarian.  My eyelids became heavier and I could not decide about the quiet song…

            Perhaps it was spirited or, perhaps, someone had broken its spirit…


	7. Confessions

            I awoke, tears splashing from my eyes.  I was comfortable, warm, rested, and filled with grief…

            The song.  I'd dreamt about it, a whirlwind of terror and mourning following the foreboding dance of Death.  

            Vindictive Death, robbing the life of _her_ and, in the same fell swoop, the spirit of her lover.  I didn't know who she was, but my heart cried for her, wanted to save her.

            Death's hand gently tucked a loose lock of hair behind my ear.

            No, not Death.  The hand was real, warm.  My eyes had been staring at the ceiling, clouded, unfocused.  I turned them, blinking, through the Hospital Wing to the origin of the hand.

            Him again.  Severus.

            Drops of water formed a trail down my face, decorating his hand.  He deserved something, anything, better than me.  Didn't he know what had happened?  Why did his eyes dance in the candlelight for only my undeserving self to see?

            He breathed.  Precious air sustaining his life as I, contemptible, watched.

            "I was a fool not to tell you," he said, as if he had thought it many times.  "I watched your love tear you apart and yet I worried…"  He looked at the candle, the flickering light illuminating his face.

            "I worried that I had imagined it."

            It was real.  No veil of sleep hid me from reality.  I wished for it—I was unprepared for this.  The things I had said to my illusion, the words I had deeply meant…

            Tainted.  The millionth repetition would have ruined the purity of the moment, left it for routine… 

            "You didn't."  I hated the sentence, choked, devoid of the feelings I had wanted it to carry.

            The medicine was wearing off.  I was slipping, slowly, softly, becoming confused…

            His lips met mine, pressing them, kissing me.  The world was fading, leaving me with this, our bodies touching in a deep, impassioned, yet unadulterated kiss.  

            Finally, he let me go, gently laying me back on the bed.

Once again, I hated sleep.


	8. What Happened

I awoke again.  A man rested upon a chair by my side, white hairs diving beneath each other in an intricate, spontaneous pattern that made a beard and a silk hat that designated him as a man of wealth and influence.  It was only by chance that he was also wise and carried inside him some goal of good.

            "Good afternoon," he rolled off, more as a habit.  Difficult subjects weighed on his shoulders.

            "What happened?"  I wasn't curious, but I said in anyway.  I wanted to close that chapter and, in a way, the sleep already had, leaving it an intangible set of feelings: horror, pain, sadness.  In another way, I sought to understand them and why they had come to me and forced their bitter pomegranate seeds to my mouth, a threat to consume my future.

            "He came for Severus."  Interest flowed back into my body, warming parts of my mind chilled by indifference.  Once Severus had played with the black fires of evil, a dark beacon in his past, and they had burnt him with a light mark on his upper arm.  Could it be…

            "An unloyal servant of the Dark Lord, he found himself trapped.  He had begun to question Voldemort's ideas, but knew certain death awaited him if he did not prove himself.  Most humans," he said, turning soft, inquisitive eyes to look into mine, "are afraid of death."  

            I remained stoic, clenching my jaw and staring back into his eyes.  I did not deny it.  He nodded.

            "An infidel, he thought, would save him, especially one whose capture would be particularly hard.  Severus, the Death Eater, taken under the wings of Dumbledoor would be perfect, he must have thought.

            "But, somehow, Severus knew what was coming.  He was prepared and the man ran away.  Terrified.  He took a back hall, the portraits in which had assembled for a meeting about proper conduct due to the fact that Peeves had had a little chat with them early.  A girl laid there, pretty, but sick and vulnerable.  The only advantage she had was that she knew about him.  He had to think quick and grabbed her.

            "He took her about 100 miles away, hiding in its closeness to Hogwarts.  It was a moor, but an enchanted one, and he used a spell to create a box underground, and there he held the girl…

            "You."  He released his breath heavily.  "We followed his trail and there is a special spell for finding areas containing a particularly large amount of magic.  His box created that, but we had to break through numerous enchantments.  I would imagine that, as we did that, our voices grew louder and louder."

            "Where's Professor Snape?"  Why had I asked?  I could only dream that he wanted to see me again.  It was my nightmare that he had seen what had happened to me and assumed he carried the same privileges.  A smile decorated the old man's face and he backed his chair away from the cot, giving me enough room to get out of it.

            "You'll find him in his dungeons."


	9. The Dementor's Kiss

AN:  Here's the story behind this chapter:  I wrote it, I got very close to posting it, I deleted it, I didn't feel like rewriting it at the moment, OotP came out, so, before writing another chapter, I had to finish it for plot reasons (my idea of him telling her he was a spy was thwarted), and, now, I am rewriting it.  At last—I'm sorry if anyone was waiting.

Before anyone informs me that the quote is not grammatically correct, I'm pretty sure there was no punctuation in its original form.  I know that scene by heart and have no doubt that those are the words.  They are, of course, from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, a book which I own three copies of, my favorite of which is, delightfully, thin enough to be taken almost anywhere.

~*~

            A long shadow stretched away from me, distorting.  The sky blackened, ink swirled thickly through it, and the shadows blended with the brightness.  This premature night was cut with a sharp, bolt-like knife and the glass whispered in its frame.  No student shared my aloneness, no student rushed blindly toward a hope of love as the torches slowly lit, once again illuminating the hallway.

            My feet flexed, pushing me forward.  I wished I could stand at the farthest edge of my shadow, if it would only deliver me faster.  I knew the way and let my mind wander the castle, the darkened sky, its own confines.

            My hand grazed the knob and, deceptively calmly, I turned it.  He was there.

            He was there.

            He was there.

            His black hair curtained his face as his head hovered above a label peeling from a thin vial.  Softly, carefully, his hand placed it inside a box.  

            "Hello."  Dishonestly serene.  He turned to face me.  A smile illuminated his face.

            "Hermione."  His robes bellowed behind him and two hands found their way upon my waist, pulling me close.  My arms looped his neck and rested upon his broad shoulders. 

            Fear, longing, hesitation.  Two people, deep in the dungeon pulled closer together, terrified by their own love for the other.

            I came to his aid, pushing aside his misgivings.  A jolt of electricity traveled my body, so dangerously but purposefully close to his, as he, in turn, saved me.  

            His mouth, soft, left mine and he breathed the cold air of the dungeon.  Quietly, he let it lay a warm kiss upon the brow of the girl whose heart he held, afraid of damaging it, while the girl did not mind if he shattered it, caring only that he had touched it.

            I rested my chin upon the black robe that hid his shoulder.  Bags and boxes invaded my vision, uninvited, dementors slowly sliding towards me.  I stood there with my soul, knowing I would soon lose it.

            "Where are you going?" Two strong arms pulled me closer and his jawbone slid gently across the crown of my head.  He murmured something and the door closed.  His hands drew mine from around his neck and I let myself be lead to a chair.  He perched upon a second, no longer touching me but with the deep raven pools shining from his face.  

            "The Order needs me again.  It's even more urgent than we had imagined…"  No better excuse could explain his flight to fight.  The fates toyed with my emotions, once stealing hope, then gifting despair.  Death awaited all Order members, stemming from one ignorant of love.  Two trembling hands interlaced their fingers with his.  Voice faltering, I struggled, returning to the beginning, afraid to meet his eyes.

            "I love you.  The world is collapsing around us but, for you and I, it has already collapsed.  I expected death but I found life, I found you.  I died, waiting for your love, or, at least, to be allowed to love you, so many times that I forgot about life.  Dying was so easy, tears so quick.  Now that I have seen the light, darkness frightens me, death is no longer inviting.  Each night, I dreamt of you and, now, to leave you for pointless sleep…

            "I love you."  My mind deluged with thoughts, I saved my breath for I knew the ones I drew with him were numbered.

            He bend forward, letting his lips heat mine for a scant, fleeting moment, ardent in its passing but heartbreaking to end.  "I love you, too."

            "I have a faint cold fear thrills through my veins," I quoted from the book that had so long kept me company.  A shuddering breath escaped me.

            "Juliet," he whispered, afraid not that he would be heard, "your death is not for five scenes…"


	10. Scene I

Scene I

            For a moment he seized my hands, pressing them gently, regretfully.  The thought of the coming moment wrapped itself around this one.  Finally, his voice low and quiet, he spoke.

            "My transport will be here soon.  Can you help me pack?"

And so I buried myself, sending last instructions to my love so he might remember me upon the death or our togetherness.  I read countless ingredients and measurements written in tall, thin writing and placed vials into bags and boxes.  My mind worked twice as fast, unwilling to lose the time with him to a cursed, though necessary, chore.

 "Can I owl you?"

"No.  I can't have owls following me around, but you can send them to the Order and I'll get them later.  I'll owl you back.  The dragon's blood is one cupboard over."

Soft clinks resounded in the cavernous classroom as I removed a large, strangely shaped bottle from behind a door.

"Damn them," I murmured.  He turned around to look at me from his past ten feet away.  In one shuddered breath, he was close.

"Why?"  Questioning, but not angry or threatening, just curious.

I rested softly upon the freezing brick.  "For taking you."

He sighed, sympathizing for it truly was his pain, too.  He pulled the list from my hand and put the last few items into the suitcase.  Closing it and picking up a few others, he motioned for me to follow.

Stairs disappeared beneath us, elevating us from inside the earth to high above her.  The tight spiral opened to an observation tower I had never seen before.  Ancient stone with sentry gargoyles encased me. The bags that burdened Severus were dropped, gently, yet hastily, to the ground.

A warm hand burnt into mine for a moment, dismissing the cold air.  I thought it funny that this dead cold existed both above and below ground.

Artificial night filled his face with shadows.  The storm, finished raining, was now only a chilling dryness decorated with jealous lightning, striking out in all her beauty, choosing to destroy things she couldn't have.  

"Come with me."  I could almost have confused his voice for the wind.  Organic, low, nearly silent but to listening ears.

Another doorway closened and, behind it, another tightly wound set of stairs.  Our shoes made angry, resounding noises and quiet breaths echoed through the dimly torch-lit staircase.  A tiny door appeared, hiding itself behind the same dizzy dustiness that encased the corridor.  The dark shape of my love slipped inside.  I followed.

Darkness even more permanent and ancient dwelled in this room.   The dull light of the stairway caressed waxy leaves that the stone had long ago surrendered to.  Severus pulled a branch from near his shoulder.

A soft, shuddering sigh escaped from the vine and it collapsed, conceding to gravity and age, nothing more than a pile of dust as it blanketed the ground around us.

"It was a prophecy."  His eyes turned upon the bough.  

_"Out of hallowed halls shall come a love made possible only by those things the lovers believe would pull them apart.  Happiness, long awaited, will live as the plant in the hidden tower dies."_


	11. Scene II

Scene II

            Midnight had long ago slid from my grasp, silvery and elusive.  I could not sleep.

            For a moment, I was back, alone, on the floor, wondering if he would come back.

            Back to hurt me, steal me from Snape.

            I wondered, for a moment, whether the words of love were real…

            The late spring night stole me from my dormitory to cradle me in its frigid arms of better-abandoned, disorganized recollections and doubts.

            Transparent eyes.

            The cold floor.

            Death.

            I didn't want it anymore, and yet it had come.  I was dead without my heart, which I had gifted him.  I was dead while my doubts and the cold night kept the heart he had given me from beating.  Dead, to all but the man who had offered to make me so.

            I'd been dead then, too.   Finishing the job with fickle physicality had been all too inviting. 

            My hand clutched a luminous collection of leaves.  The branch was alive and invisible roots would not let it droop.  

A Phoenix Plant.  Phoenix Perpetua.  Died and resurrected many times, like me.   How long could it last alive?  How long could it say dead?

            Only this much survived.  The rest had crumbled, needing only the smallest touch to achieve its long-needed rest.  Our love and happiness had sprung from the ash it had littered onto the floor.  Its dieing breath created us.

            He flew away into the darkness. Our happiness together was so different from our happiness apart.  I had lived for him—

            Until I died, died into the night.  Unscreaming, unafraid.

            But now the hot sun melted me from the icy embrace that held me.  Life returned.  I stumbled from my bed.

            "Hermione?"  
            "Where were you?  Dumbledore wouldn't tell us!"

            What day was it?  How long had it truly been?  I had slipped back into this normality only after I had found the strength to leave the tower, to stop fancying I could still see him leaving.  Among the awake, it was different.

            "I was at St. Mungo's.  I was sick."  A harmless lie, only half false.  They accepted it, not knowing and, perhaps, not caring for the difference.

            "You missed the Transfiguration test.  I know you studied hard."

            So it must be Saturday.  I asked and they confirmed my suspicion.

            Only a week ago, it had been my illusions that awoke me.  In a few days, heaven and hell had emerged, shattering my old life…

            Saturday.  It was Saturday.  

            I ran the gauntlet of the common room.  Questions, carelessly hurled, assaulted me.  I longed to be outside, peaceful, alone—though, the company of one was welcomed.

            My footfalls echoed against the cold stone.  I pushed my way through uninhabited halls, dodging unwelcome and non-existent interrogations.  I wanted the pain and love I had felt for myself.  Speaking them aloud would steal their sacredness, put them into mortal terms.

            Hooves tapped out a rhythm.  A human waist grew from the shoulders of a horse.

            Firenze.

            "Hermione.  I must speak with you."  His voice was soothing, a lullaby.  A celestially arranged face held the secrets of the stars.  "I have seen… something."

            My heart, lonely, but unbroken, readied itself for whatever was to come.  Two hands braced me, unseen—an illusion.__


	12. Scene III

Scene III

            The Past pulled Future towards him, his flesh angry and bruising upon her willowy back.  The poison from his lips passed through hers, speeding her heart with danger and letting her artificially share his passion.  Strength was not her gift, but seduction.  Beauty and opportunity shone from her gleaming, faraway body and men threw their lives to her, never to receive anything.

            But, when it came to it, the past was stronger.  Muscles gifted by time rippled against her skin.  She didn't care, but pulled him closer.  

Perhaps she would die.

            Why fight the poison?  Why fight him?  

            Perhaps there was something to be gained from both.

            Stars whose light had long ago been lost to the past now shone future upon the earth and the gifted divined the drama, spread naked before them.  Within their casket, leaves whispered of what they had seen that even the most talented of others would not see for years…

            To the slow, they told the past and not the future.

            A crippling calm seemed to rest in his eyes and beat in the swish of his tail, but blood raced through his veins, intelligent and noble and magical.  Firenze, blessed with the mystic gift only centaurs receive, had seen it almost too late.  If I were to be warned…

            Only an icy calm responded.  

            _Send evil minions of the past upon me, but don't take away my love.  _

            "Thank you; I will be wary."

            "You must take every precaution."  Concerned eyes slanted with worry I did not want.

            "I know the past."

            "It comes differently!  History repeats itself and we do not notice it, not only because we've forgotten, but also because it wears a different mask, only to pull it off when we are unguarded."

            The stony ice shattered from within, an explosion of fire, hidden feelings afraid of the truth in what was without…

            "Fuck history!  Fuck the future!  I just want him here with me.  I'm so tired, but with him, I don't need sleep.  We can outrun fatigue…  Fuck prophecies—  

"We can outrun them too."  

The last pointed shard finally hit the ground, and the ice felt how ridiculously loud it had truly been in the cutting silence.

"Love," he whispered, afraid to fully permeate it, "is the noblest feeling in the world, but—"

"Fuck you, too."  Tears pulled my vision into distorted shapes and harlequin colors and clouded my eyes that knew he was right.

But…


	13. Scene IV

"I need you."

            My thin hand flew in up- and down-strokes across the paper, ink blotches and lines.

            "I love you and I need you.

            "Once you rescued me but now I am alone.  You saved my soul, but now it yearns for you.  You are everything to me, and the thought of living without you scares me.  What happiness is granted us?  Surely this is not it.  Perhaps the stars wait for us to create our own happiness, then twinkle it into the night.

            "I love you.  Please come to me."

            Tears I refused to shed brought reds and pinks to my complexion.  Noon was approaching and I knew it was useless.  Real love had spoiled me and my illusions were not enough.  I was selfish and only he could pacify my consuming greed.

            As I was selfish, he was selfless.  He had waited, too.  Watching and hoping, an obsession had, too, boiled through his body, propelling him to live another day…

            He had found a larger cause than the happiness of two.  He had left with too few deep, passionate kisses and without me in his arms.

            I tried to be like him, reaching vainly for the flawlessness my glinting raven silently flew into the night…

            I could not do it.  I needed him here, somehow—in my arms, in my dreams, for, when you allow your full body to be immersed in it, fantasy is reality.

            It was Saturday and the illusions would not comfort my crying heart.  Today I could go to  Hogsmead and drinks could steal me away from freezing, burning reality…

            My parchment curled as flames surrounded it.  Stupid words I did not need.

            Light seemed only to come from the smooth, garishly-colored surfaces, beneath which swam water laced with fire, heaven laced with hell…

            My reality.

            A shining coin and a look beneath my dark eyelashes.  He knew only two things—that I was too young and that the money made him not care.  A saccharine-sweet pink greeted me, but it proved deceptive.

            My throat burned and my eyes squeezed shut.

            More.  Not wanted, but needed.

            Denied me by something better, sweeter, warmer.  A hand upon my chin.

            Again, he rescued me.

            Now I watched him mix something different, an opague red that came from liquid transparencies.  Ashamed, I took it and drank it.  The cool, uncomfortable feeling, chased by a grating heat, left me, fleeing through my fingertips and feet. 

            "I was scared."

            "I know."  He understood and we rested against the cold wall in this strange room—a communal living space for the professors that had somehow become an abandoned library and display of potions and specimens age pulled at the flesh of.  A large couch rested, empty, in a deep sleep that had remained unbroken for ages.

            "Why are you back?"  

            "I was scared."  His eyes focused on mine and stole them from me.  I could do nothing with them but stare back.

            Slowly, I felt his arms reach for me and mine reach for him.  A shuddering kiss reminded me of a beautiful reality I had long searched for and too quickly forgotten.

            "I'm not afraid anymore."  Whispered.  Truer than my even my heart.

            "Nor I."  

            We were bound by our arms, connecting us by our own choice to each other.

            "Sevarus?"

            "Hermione?"  A silly word.  I had long ago lost myself to him, for him, in the black pools of his eyes…

            "Why me?"

            "I don't know. 

            "Hermione?"

            "Sevarus?"  The syllables, when together, meant the one thing I needed more than oxygen, more than anything I could think of.

            "I want to marry you."


	14. Scene V

Scene V

Time had forsaken me for eons, letting me rot in misery and my heart cry countless bitter tears, but now…

_            Colors swirl with black, madly invading my vision, confusing my senses until I know only joy and sadness and love._

_            Confusion is its own sweet escape, for through the pandemonium there remains one thing—_

_            Him. I will never, have never loved any but him.  I will be his._

_            Summer will bring warmth and freedom and marriage.  No one can know but the night sky, no one can hear but the ocean._

_            I push warm blankets from myself.  The soft breathing of slumbering girls who have ventured nothing reaches my ears, who listened as I risked and received everything._

_            Robes replace my nightgown in a rustle of fabric.  The hallway replaces the dorm in a soft series of footfalls.  Morning has come, but the students do not greet her.  Alone, but gloriously so, she colors the sky and dances upon tightly-furled flowers._

_            Heedless of the calm morning, a set of heels races across the hard wood.  The professor, unknowing of my roost upon the top stair, vanishes into a hallway, a pigeon, fearing a fox, safe within a birdhouse._

_            Against the worn wood, something glints, darker in color and lifetimes younger._

_I travel the stairs, The early sun's beams of light dance through windows, high above.  My hand, reaching for the wand, is second to another, larger, paler._

_The past uses dark corners to stalk the future._

_A man who mutilated my hopes for, then inadvertently gave me the happiness that I know held in my heart clutches the length of willow._

_In the hidden tower, ash litters the floor, ready to live again, weary with death._

_I don't wonder how he got here.  Outside, fear paralyses me, but my brain is only quicker from my body's slowness._

_He's been here the whole time.  Voldemort cannot retrieve him here.  _

_Things hidden are found.  Hidden flaws become glaring imperfections._

_But he can leave, if he is clever enough.  He can rescue himself._

_His eyes hold me a different kind of captive.  They are unchanged, a clear that one cannot see through._

_I'm running, running from the past, too wise, too alive, too complete to be hurt again.  I have lived so much and loved so much that if history were to repeat itself, if the future were to be taken._

_No hint of panic in him, I hear him gift me what I do not want any more._

_"Avada Kedavra."_

_~*~ Fin  ~*~_


End file.
